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Mar 24

Processed food, your mitochondria, and ageing

I was reading a research paper over breakfast this morning, and yet again found ANOTHER good reason to eat clean and avoid processed foods and junk foods. I’ll quickly share it with you before I get stuck into my learning for the day.

A vast majority of processed foods broadly tend to be:

  • made from processed grains
  • they have had components of their original make-up removed (often natural fats) in order to extend their shelf life (leave the natural fats in, and the foods would go rancid)
  • for these reasons, they tend to be energy-dense (lots of calories, mostly carbs) and nutrient-poor (lacking vitamins and minerals)

This is a gross over-simplification, but it reasonably accurately describes foods such as bread, pasta, white rice, cakes, pastries, burger buns, snack bars, cereals and almost all packaged convenience food and almost all non-perishable snack foods.

So the food delivers energy, I.E. it gives you calories, but it fails to deliver nutrients the way Mother Nature intended. If you eat 600 grams of cabbage or broccoli you get some calories, but you get a bunch of vitamins, minerals and enzymes too. If you eat 600 grams of white bread, you get the calories, but very little of the nutrients (and those you do get, are synthetic, added in a factory, and hence far less bio-available to your body, because they are not ‘packaged’ naturally in balance with their relevant digestive enzymes, etc.).  Read more

Mar 20

3 Comments

Sticking to your Healthy Eating goals and avoiding temptation

Earlier today, a dear friend called me and asked me about motivation, and about how I ‘stick to it’.

My friend wanted to know how I manage to stay on the right track, I keep making the right choices and I don’t give in to temptation. My friend asked me if I would write about this, for all of you to read.

Well, yes I will. For today, I’ll just touch on this topic briefly, then another time I will write much more. This topic of controlling your own urges and the mental struggle of  

The truth is, we all KNOW what to do, but we don’t DO what we know.

  • We ALL know that it is healthier to eat a plateful of steamed green vegetables than it is to eat pizza or Chinese take away
  • We ALL KNOW it is healthier to have a glass of water, than a cola or a beer
  • We ALL know that it is healthier to eat salad, than burger and chips
  • We all KNOW that it is healthier to go for a walk rather than sitting on the sofa all evening staring at the TV

But we still sometimes make the wrong choices. WHY? Read more

Mar 18

4 Comments

Has anyone got a copy of this month’s ‘How to Breathe’ magazine…?

I stopped in at Sainsbury’s the other day to buy a bunch of flowers, and I spotted this magazine on the shelf - ‘Womens Walking’

What? Does someone think women need a bi-monthly magazine to tell them how to walk now? Is this a joke? Is it April 1st?

Look, I don’t want to put down anyone who engages in physical exercise - walking is the #1 best exercise going and we should all walk every day and I regularly encourage you to get up, get out and go walk. So I am not down on walking, and not criticising anyone who pro-actively makes an effort to get out and walk more often. BUT, I think this is a classic example of the complete rip-off of the ‘diet and health industry’ that they try to cash-in on healthier lifestyles, by trying to convince people there is some kind of science around going for a walk. There isn’t, don’t fall for it. I did NOT look in the magazine, it would have likely wound me up too much…but what comes next, I can imagine, you probably need special shoes that cost £130 quid, and you need nutrition tips, a hydration pack, blister-resistant socks, a training plan?

IMG_1912The articles  - kit guide, events, routes, weight loss. Folks, please don’t be fooled by the over-complication and over-scientific-complexity of going out for a walk…just walk! Any time, any place, any weather, just go for a walk. Do you think you need a ‘kit guide’ for that? Let me help:

Hydration - take a bottle of water.

Really long walk - take 3 bottles of water.

Fuel on long walks - take some food, carrots, apples, hard boiled eggs.

Lots of water and food to carry - get a rucksack - tends to have an opening at the top, you put stuff in then close it up and carry it.

Looks like it might rain - take a jacket.

Routes - find a hill, woods, a forest, a coastal path, looks for signs that say ‘Footpath’ - and go explore. Buy a local map.

Really, I just don’t think it needs to get any more complicated than that. You don’t need to spend a load of money. Read more

Mar 14

The 12 Core Principles of MotherNaturesDiet are very carefully balanced to help you focus on the MOST important issues in improving overall health.

The 12 Core Principles of MotherNaturesDiet are clustered in 3 groups:

Group 1: Things to quit 12 Core Principles - 3

Group 2: Things to consume

Group 3: Exercise and lifestyle factors

Each group contains 4 Rules. All these rules are brief and purposefully simplified - MND is all about keeping it simple, to help ordinary busy people cut through the ‘diet industry’ and ‘health industry’ marketing bullshit and get to what really works.

You’ll see that there are TWICE AS MANY Rules about ‘what not to eat’ as there are about ‘what TO eat’. This is structured this way on purpose, because I believe it is TWICE as important to get all the crap OUT of your life than to spend all your time worrying about the nuances and minutiae of what you should be eating. Diet perfectionism be damned, just eat real whole foods, eliminate chemicals from your body and avoid ALL processed foods, and you’ll have ‘the diet thing’ 90% licked. Read more

Mar 13

You think my food is boring? Try taking a look at your LIFE!

Someone recently said to me “Oh man I know it’s healthy and all that, but a lot of your food looks really boring, you eat the same thing all the time, eggs and greens, nuts and fruit, meat and veggies, it’s so boring. Don’t you want Chinese take away and pizza and chips and curry and loads of different things every week? Come on mate, you only live once, have some fun! Don’t you get bored?”

Erm, no, I don’t, thanks. Fortunately, I actually have enough going on in my life that I don’t need to look to my evening meal to find something thrilling and exciting in my day. Read more

Mar 8

3 quick Top Tips for a Healthy Weekend

Happy Weekend!!

Here are my top tips for a HEALTHY weekend:

Tip 1: Eat REAL food

  • That means things that grow in the mud or from a tree (think apples, broccoli, carrots, parsnips, pears)…   - and things that run, swim or fly, things that make noises and move (think chicken, lamb, salmon) Read more

Mar 7

1 Comment

Spring Special Offer - Get Excited Now!

Seasonal discounts available NOW on range of MND health and fitness products.

The sun is shining!!! Wooohooo!! The ceaseless rain in the UK seems to be coming to an end, and as spring is coming, here at MND we want to help put a spring in your step!

So grab yourself a bargain right now!

First on the list, we can offer you our revolutionary new health product called ‘Air’! This little beauty offers you a simply life-saving range of health benefits, just look what this fantastic ‘Air’ can do for you:

  • Without this, you’re dead in just 5 minutes! Boo yah, beat that SlimFast!
  • Research shows that every living person on Earth, now and EVEN back in the ‘Golden Era’ of the Paleolithic period, they ALL breathed Air! Boom! Take that ViSalus!
  • Suitable for vegans, vegetarians, pescetarians, breatharians, gnashing meat-eaters, cannibals and pretty much everyone else alive! Kapow! Who’s ya daddy now Multi-Vit tablet? Read more

Mar 1

1 Comment

Getting the macronutrient balance right - the simple way, with MotherNaturesDiet

I was recently asked for my advice on macronutrients in a healthy diet:

  • How much protein should I eat?
  • You seem to advocate a very low-carb diet. Should I eat more carbs, where do you get your energy from?
  • Do you eat lots of good fats?
  • What about saturated fats? Omega-3’s? Oils?
  • 3 meals per day, or 4, or 5, or 6?

I believe that eating has gotten far too complicated, we are all wrapped up in measuring calories, macronutrients and micronutrients, when I believe that if we are eating the right foods, then such ‘scientific detail’ is not really worth worrying about too much, not for most people. Read more